Protesters gather in front of San Francisco's City Hall on Tuesday to protest the Olympic torch's arrival in the city and oppose plans to carry it through Tibet.
(Credit: Hanna Sistek/CNET News.com)SAN FRANCISCO--Wearing T-shirts reading "Free Tibet," hundreds of protesters raised their fists here Tuesday to protest the Beijing Olympic torch relay's arrival to the city. Most were from the Bay Area, but some came all the way from New York and Canada to mark their opposition to the Chinese government's plans to carry the torch through Tibet and to the summit of Mount Everest.
SF Team Tibet, a coalition of Tibetans and human-rights supporters that organized the event, is calling on corporate Olympic sponsors Samsung, Lenovo, and Coca-Cola to withdraw their support of the torch relay. The organizers are also calling on international governments to boycott the opening ceremony of the Olympics "to show they do not endorse the Chinese government's brutal actions in Tibet."
Some of the groups in the coalition support the Olympics being held in China as long as the games result in dialogue.
Organizers of Tuesday's protests, which are expected to continue full force Wednesday, are, not surprisingly, using the Web as a tool at the site SFTorch2008.org. Not only is the site being used as a rallying point for information and photos, the organizers are signing up people to receive e-mails on events in the area and asking for donations.
Protester Thupten Dhondup, 40, was born in Nepal to Tibetan parents.
(Credit: Hanna Sistek/CNET News.com)The protesters are hardly the first to use Web sites. The massive rallies prior to the Iraq War--and flash mob-like protests in cities such as San Francisco--were largely organized through the Web and other electronic communications such as texting.
At Tuesday's protest, some demonstrators held up red signs reading "Made in China" to bring attention to Americans' use of goods made in the country. Last year, U.S. trade with China amounted to $322 billion in imports and $65 billion in exports, according to figures from the U.S. Census bureau. Twenty-seven percent of the imports from China, or $88 billion worth, were "advanced technology products," according to the Census Bureau, while one-third of the exports to China fell into that category. This includes computers, biotech products, solar cells, and fiber-optic cable.
Among the speakers Tuesday were representatives of Students for a Free Tibet, the Tibet Association of Northern California, and Regional Tibetan Youth Congress. Protester Thupten Dhondup, 40, was born in Nepal to Tibetan parents. "I came here today because I support the suffering Tibetans," he said. "So many people are being killed and nobody knows what is happening in Lhasa now; nobody is allowed in."
Also at the rally, Tibetan monks released 50 white doves in a scene framed by a forest of colorful Tibetan flags brought by the crowd.
At the rally, monks release 50 white doves as a sign of the Tibetan quest for freedom. 'We should express our views peacefully, in a dignified way,' Tenzin Chonden, North American representative to the Tibetan government, later said onstage.
(Credit: Hanna Sistek/CNET News.com)Inspectors for the International Olympic Committee are reminding China of its obligation to provide open Internet access to journalists attending this summer's games, according to a BBC news report.
The Olympic torch, designed by Chinese PC maker Lenovo, is now alit and en route to the Summer Olympics.
(Credit: Lenovo)China, which will host the Olympic Games in Beijing in August, has a reputation of restricting Internet access to various Web sites, such as YouTube, which recently has served up video clips of unrest in Tibet, and to foreign news sites.
But under its contract with the International Olympic Committee, China is required to provide journalists with Internet access, according to the BBC report. The IOC expressed concern over China's Internet access, particularly following last month's protests over its handling of matters related to Tibet.
The unrest in Tibet, covered by a variety of news organizations, has led to calls to boycott the Olympic Games, according to a report in Associated Press.
"There was some criticism that the Internet closed down during events relating to Tibet in previous weeks--but this is not Games time," Kevan Gosper of the IOC told the BBC. "Our concern is that the press is able to operate as it has at previous Games during Games time."
Protests break out in some nation around the globe and one of the first things a media-shy government does--just after sending in riot police--is pull the plug on YouTube.
The latest example is China's handling of protests in Tibet. The Chinese government has blocked access to YouTube in that country after scores of clips showing violence between police and protesters were posted to the site, according to hundreds of reports found on Google News.
On a trip to China in 2007, News.com reporter Michael Kanellos visited the offices of KU6.com, a rapidly growing video-sharing site in China. Here, KU6 workers review videos for "inappropriate" content before they can be posted.
(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET News.com)Scores of other media outlets have been blocked or partially blacked out in China, including broadcasts of CNN, the BBC World, and Google News. But it's YouTube that gets all the ink.
In an example of YouTube's influence, blocking access to the video-sharing site is now a sort of scarlet letter for governments. The site, which allows individuals to communicate with mass audiences, has become a symbol of free speech to many, and governments that forbid it are immediately branded around the world as repressive.
This kind of image can't be welcomed by China as it prepares to host this summer's Olympic Games in Beijing.
In its report on China's YouTube ban, The New York Times asks whether the Internet and its ability to enable individuals to communicate with large audiences can stand up to a "ruthless government."
The Web publication for British newspaper The Times wrote Monday: "YouTube has been blocked in the past, and the so-called Great Firewall of China prevents discussion of and searches for many sensitive topics, such as the Tiananmen Square protests."
The ban was reported in newspapers in a host of other countries including Russia, Turkey, Canada, and Ireland.
China is obviously no fan of user-generated content. In January, the Chinese government tried to impose a rule whereby only state-run companies could post videos to the Web. The measure was quickly altered after people began raising questions about freedom of speech.
The country's authorities routinely block sites such as Wikipedia, the BBC, and even live TV transmissions to hinder publication of stories on the Dalai Lama, Falun Gong, or even stories critical of leaders or governments that China is trying to build better relationships with. Last May, while reporter Michael Kanellos watched a CNN story on Myannmar from a hotel in Beijing, the screen went blank. CNN only returned when the news station was broadcasting a different story.
The Great Firewall of China isn't perfect, and it will alternate between blocking particular sites and allowing particular sites, but it does make it more difficult for Chinese citizens to get full information or news stories, according to some analysts.
The Firewall also seems to allow Westerners to view objectionable material in China, while blocking it for Chinese readers. Conceivably, this could be a technique to blunt criticism from the West.
On an Internet connection from a room in a Western-owned hotel, censorship was fairly light, Kanellos reported. Hundreds of images of the Tiananmen Massacre of 1989 popped up on Google Images, particularly images of "Tank Man." News stories, or at least headlines, on controversial subjects came up as well. In an Internet cafe, far fewer images of "Tank Man" appeared, but they could still be found. A few videos of the riots also were available on second-tier video sites like Veoh Networks.
But those results came when the search is conducted in English. Searching for Tiananmen Square on Google's Chinese Image site with Chinese characters revealed no pictures of the riots in 14 pages of images. The only one--on 14 pages of results--that relates to the 1989 riots was a picture of the Goddess of Liberty. On Baidu, the more popular Chinese Web search site, not even that came up.
In the latest controversy, the Chinese government may have been spooked by what happened in Myanmar last year. Clips of troops clashing with protesters were widely videotaped and posted to YouTube before the site was blacked out in Myanmar. By then it was too late. World condemnation of the crackdown was only spurred on by the YouTube ban.
Perhaps the poster child for bans gone wrong is Pakistan. The government there was angered over videos it found disrespectful to Islam and demanded YouTube be blocked. An ISP in Pakistan goofed and erroneously shut down access to YouTube around the world. The government lifted the ban soon after.
The other important issue in all this is how Google will respond to China's ban. A representative said that the company is "looking into the matter," and trying to "ensure that the service is restored as soon as possible."
But what happens if China wants Google to begin self censoring videos or wants to know the names of the people who posted the clips of the Tibet violence?
Yahoo can be used as a model of what can go wrong when negotiating with the Chinese government. The portal handed over information about a journalist who was later sentenced to eight years in prison for posting comments critical of the government online. Yahoo's action has been widely condemned ever since.
CNET News.com staff writer Michael Kanellos contributed to this report.
People all over China are reporting that YouTube access has been blocked, possibly in connection with a Chinese government crackdown on Tibet, according to a colleague of mine at CNET Asia.
"I can't access the site here, either, and a quick ping through my network utility does show 100 percent packet loss, indicating that a block is likely in effect," Rick Martin, who reports from China, writes on his blog. As evidence, he includes this screenshot taken from his computer:
"There were some videos uploaded to YouTube already about the demonstrations, but this block will definitely throw a wrench (into) anyone's plans to upload more," he writes. "That said, Chinese versions of YouTube, which have been told to censor this kind of sensitive content, are all still up and running as I write this."
The Dalai Lama on Sunday called for an international investigation of the crackdown, as Tibetan rioting against Chinese rule spread to other provinces. More than 80 people are reported dead in the past few days.
Access to YouTube from the United States was unimpeded, and a search of the site yielded dozens of what appear to be amateur videos recently added to the site chronicling the violence.
YouTube has suffered regional roadblocks before. The Google-owned video-sharing site suffered a global outage last month, when the Pakistan government--apparently displeased by a video running on the site--ordered that access to the site by Pakistan residents be cut off. The service was eventually restored to most of the world, but it would be a few days until Pakistan allowed its residents to again access the site.
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